Monica Jato

Monica Jato is a Professor of Hispanic Studies in the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham, where she teaches Spanish language, literature, and culture courses including specialized modules on Digital Media and Spanish Youth Culture, and Spanish Exile Culture. Her academic leadership spans cross-cultural exile studies and contemporary Spanish literary analysis.

Her educational background includes:

• Licenciada en Filología Hispánica from Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao
• PhD from Michigan State University

Professor Jato's research centers on cross-cultural comparative approaches to exile and migration, examining exile as a cultural topology where refugees transform dehumanizing spaces into sites of cultural resistance. She investigates intergenerational memory care, testimony in film, contemporary Spanish poetry, and 20th-21st century Spanish peninsular literature through postcolonial and cultural lenses. Her work critically engages with displacement, transnationality, resilience, and inclusivity in migration processes while recovering marginalized women's voices in literary canons.

Analysis of her 14 recent publications (2014-2024) reveals consistent focus on exile experiences across Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain, with emphasis on inner/territorial exile duality, letter-writing networks, and testimonial expression in poetry and film. Key interdisciplinary patterns include spatial analysis of refugee journeys, gendered perspectives on evacuation legacies, and cultural strategies for adaptation in displaced communities.

Scientific Awards:

• No specific awards listed in source materials

Professor Jato currently supervises doctoral research on contemporary Spanish women writers, Spanish Civil War memory texts, carceral writing, and forced migration. She served as Co-Investigator for the Leverhulme Trust-funded project 'Inner and Territorial Exile in Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain' (2017-2019), producing comparative analyses of oppression writing.

She actively participates in international research networks including GEXEL (Grupo de Estudios del Exilio Literario), Fenix (Network for Research on Female Exiles, Refugees and Migrants), and PoGEsp (Spanish Poetry and Gender), collaborating on transnational studies of exile literature and gendered migration experiences.